4 days of excellent riding

Friday: Novi Ligure to Castellania to see the Coppi memorial.
The Casa Coppi museum was closed, which came as no surprise.


Spent about 3 hours in the Museo dei Campionnissimi at Novi Ligure, and took a couple of hundred photos of stuff that only an extreme bikenerd could get excited about.

Saturday: from Novi Ligure, over Passa del Turchino (part of the Milan-San Remo course), through Genova (a sprawling and grubby port city). I decide to head further down down the coast. Mid-afternoon, as I climb out of Camoglia, I run out of water but over the hill it is cooler, and I crawl into Rapallo and top up my bottles. Over the next hill to Chiavari, where most of Italy was at the beach, and but the Hotel Doria had a room for very reasonable 42euros. Click here for map.

Sunday: caught the train to Pisa, saw the damn tower, then hit the road to Volterra, a town at 531m altitude,a fact I failed to notice on my map.
Probably inhabited continuously for the last 2000 years if the Roman ampitheatre is any indication.
I would have stayed another night, but the hotel didn't have room.

Today: Volterra to Siena, in the pissing rain.
Found a good backroads route, and didn't get lost, at least not so that it mattered.
Cecil broke a spoke, so I am looking for a man with a big spanner to get the freewheel off.